Saturday, November 7, 2015

Pigeons and Circumstances

One fine morning, my daughters were bustling with excitement. Two pigeons were busy building a nest in our balcony. We were going to share a corner of our home with a new couple and welcome new lives, new baby pigeons in a short while. Very soon, we saw two eggs and the girls were all excited about the happenings. Our house help swiftly came in one morning and decided that this was not the place for a nest and eggs. She was about to move it, when the shrill scream of my girls stopped her. No, please do not touch the eggs, if a human touches them then the mother pigeon destroys the eggs. It was our mission now to protect the eggs and help bring the baby pigeons to the world safely. We are in it together with the parent pigeons now.

Days go by, I am travelling on business and I get a video message from home. The eggs have hatched, the baby pigeons are out. I talk to the girls and hear the excitement in their voices, of seeing new life, of seeing God's miracle. Well, the baby pigeons are a bit ugly, nothing like they expected it to be. But,  mission accomplished, we were part of the guardian angel network that helped bring these pigeons into the world. Now, it is time to ensure they grow up into big healthy pigeons and fly away. I get daily updates of how the parents feed the young ones. We are disgusted by the amount of pooh these tiny pigeons excrete. The pigeons were not the role models for hygienic behaviour. But, we decide to ignore these small irritants as we were part of the mission to transform these babies into strong birds that are ready to take on the world. We are in it together with the parent pigeons, of course!

And then I come back one evening from work to a somber silent home, I wondered what died that day. And my wife breaks the news to me that one of the baby pigeons have died, that the girls are equally sad as they are bitter about it. My elder daughter shows her indignation when she cries "Murder!". The parent pigeons had killed the young one. Google research showed that some pigeons do that  when the young one is not healthy or when it creates too much of noise that threatens the nesting place. So that was likely, but it could also have been some other pigeon or predatory bird. The jury is still out on that. The next day however, the mystery deepens as the remaining young pigeon is also killed. It is a depressing sad day for us. We had taken on the role of saviour and guardian, now having failed miserably at it. We are not even sure if we were in it together with the parent pigeons, them being the number one suspects in this gruesome murder. Beyond the sadness and depression, this taught us one valuable lesson. Don't try to play God or guardian to anybody or anything. Your own life is not in your hands, you are but a tiny cosmic speck. Do the best you can in a detached manner. You are just a circumstance in other's lives and all we can try to be is a good circumstance.